44 PERCENT OF AMERICANS 18-27 HAVE DELETED THE FACEBOOK APP THIS YEAR, POLL FINDS
September 6, 2018 in News by RBN Staff
via: BLACKLISTED NEWS
SOURCE: MOTHERBOARD | VICE
Many Americans have responded to Facebook’s ongoing privacy and disinformation controversies by reducing their usage of the social media platform. Others have responded by deleting the Facebook app entirely, a new study insists.
According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of Facebook users ages 18 and older have adjusted their privacy settings in the wake of revelations that Facebook repeatedly failed to protect consumer data as it was shared and abused by a myriad of Facebook partners, including political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
The study also notes that around 42 percent of Facebook users have chosen to take a break from the social platform of several weeks or more, with a quarter of users choosing to delete the Facebook app from their phones entirely in the last year.
Pew found that age largely determined whether or not users were likely to delete Facebook entirely, with 44 percent of younger users (ages 18-27) having deleted the app in recent months, compared with just 12 percent of users 65 or older. However, older users in turn are far more likely to have adjusted their privacy settings in the last year, Pew noted.